“I can cook, Miss Towne.  I do all our cooking and Daddy says I’m fine at it.”

“I know, my dear, but there are other things connected with the Course that you need.”

“What things?” asked Lydia, a trine obstinately.

“That’s what I want you to find out for yourself.  Come, Lydia, take my word for it.  It’s only two hours a week and no outside study required.  If after a term of it, you still think it’s useless, why drop it.”

So behold Lydia entered in the Cooking Course which was not popular.  The mothers of the majority of the girls did not, they said, send their daughters to school to be taught kitchen service.  But by the efforts of Miss Towne and one or two other teachers, a dozen children ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, with Lydia as the infant of the class, were enticed into the bright model kitchen in the basement.

It was not long after this that Lydia said to her father, one evening,

“Daddy, I’ve got to have twenty-five cents.”

Amos looked up from his newspaper.  “What for, Lydia?  A quarter’s a good deal of money.  Takes me pretty near two hours to earn it.”

“I know it,” answered Lydia, wincing, “but I’ve got to buy a nail file.  You ought to see my hands compared with the other girls.  And you ought to see dirty finger nails under the microscope.  The cooking school teacher showed us before we made bread, today.”

Amos looked at Lydia thoughtfully for a moment, then he carefully abstracted a quarter from his pocket, laid it on the table and went back to his reading.

Lydia planned a real feast for Thanksgiving.  She negotiated with Billy Norton for the exchange of two pounds of fudge for a brace of wild duck.  The Saturday before Thanksgiving, she gave the house its usual “lick and promise” and then started out with her skates to enjoy the first ice of the season.

She had a glorious morning.  There was no snow and the lake had frozen crystal clear.  The air was breathless.  As she skated she chanted, to improvised tunes, bits of verse.

  “The stag at eve had drunk his fill
  Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill
  And deep his midnight lair had laid
  In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade.

  “I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he,
  I galloped, Dirk galloped, we galloped all three. 
  ‘Good speed!’ cried the watch as the gate bolts undrew,
  ‘Speed’ echoed the wall to us galloping through.”

She hunted through Scottish mountains and moors, she whirled from Ghent to Aix and still high hearted and in the land of visions, took off her skates and entered the house.  She banged the door, then stood for a moment staring.  Elviry and Margery were seated before the living-room stove, while old Lizzie sat on one edge of Amos’ arm chair eyeing the two belligerently.

Margery was wearing a new fur coat.  Her beautiful black eyes looked out from under a saucy fur-trimmed hat with a scarlet quill on the side.  Elviry wore black broadcloth with fox collar and muff.  Lydia, in a remodeled coat of her mother’s, and her old Tam and mended mittens, recovered from her surprise quickly.